House At The End Of The Street Poster: Get Out Of There, Jennifer Lawrence!

If we could watch actors careers the way we do horror movies, sitting in the audience and cheering when they make a bad choice and cringing when they make a bad one, I think we'd all be sitting in the crowd and screaming at Jennifer Lawrence, "Girl, don't go in there!" The Hunger Games star has been on a meteoric rise the last few years, snagging an Oscar nomination for her breakthrough role Winter's Bone, joining giant films like X-Men: First Class and The Hunger Games, and now lining up intriguing future projects like Serena and The Glass Castle. But before she can get to any of that future glory, she's got to get past the cinematic equivalent of going down to investigate that weird noise in the basement: The House at the End of the Street.

Looking for all the world like the kind of generic, slightly exploitative horror thriller that an actress of Lawrence's stature ought to be able to avoid, House at the End of the Street-- which conveniently shortens down to HATES if you like acronyms-- comes to theaters September 21, meaning it will almost definitely beat David O. Russell's The Silver Linings Playbook into theaters and become Lawrence's official Hunger Games follow-up, even though it was filmed in 2010, before either her Oscar nomination or her casting as Katniss. If you want to see a pretty perfect example of why I have such low expectations for this movie, check out the official poster which was recently sent our way. You can click on it for the higher-res version.

Hot girl in a tank top? Check. Suitably bland but kinda-menacing tagline? Check. A title treatment that looks way too much like the Daniel Craig flop Dream House? Yeah, I'm sure that's unintentional, but check anyway. I'm not really one for "hot girl in peril" horror movies anyway, but I'm especially frustrated by this one, which seems to be capitalizing on Lawrence's well-earned fame for the sake of a low-ambition horror movie. She'll clearly have no trouble moving on from this, but it's still a speed bump she's got to get over before moving on to her amazing career.